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Every product leader has to make them: the high-stakes decisions that define outcomes, shape careers, and don't come with easy answers.
The Hard Calls podcast, hosted by Trisha Price, features candid conversations with product and tech leaders about the pivotal decisions that drive great products and the pressure that comes with it. From conflicting priorities and unclear success metrics to aligning teams and navigating executive expectations, you will hear compelling stories and best practices that drive business outcomes and help you make the Hard Calls.
Real decisions. Real stakes. Real leadership.
Presented by Pendo
Learn more at pendo.io/
Follow Trisha Price on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trisha-price-3063081/
Trisha Price: Hi everyone.
I have an exclusive discount
for hard calls listeners to
Pendomonium Pendo Product Festival.
I would like to invite you to join me in
Raleigh, North Carolina from March 24th
to 26th with an exclusive 30% discount.
When you use the code hardcalls30,
that's hardcalls all lowercase,
and the numbers three zero.
Get your discounted ticket
at pendo.io/Pendomonium.
See you there.
Dave Killeen: I think the hardest
call I've ever had to make on
people was our Productboard.
We had three riffs, right?
And most companies were just really just
going through a lot of redundancies.
No one knew it was
happening in the market.
And so it was hard to promise to the
org, we're not gonna do this again.
This is the first riff we've ever done.
There's a never do it
again, to stay with us.
Then you go through the second, then
you go through the third, and you're
trying to get people to believe.
You're trying to be transparent and
honest and authentic, and you're
trying to wrap your arms about them
and do it in the fairest way possible.
It was one of the most, the
proudest leadership moments I've
ever had, but we're also one
of the saddest as well, right?
But you have to hold yourself together
for that and make sure the team that you
wanna stay believe in it and are fired up.
And obviously they're expected to
do is more, more, more than ever.
Right?
With less, less resource.
From 50 in my team to 18.
Really that was the hardest thing
I've had to do, I think emotionally.
Trisha Price: Hi everyone, and welcome
back to Hard Calls on today's show.
I am so excited to talk to Dave
Killeen, our Field Chief Product
Officer for EMEA at Pendo.
I know Dave, and if you know Dave, you
know he is a self-proclaimed product
geek, I think we probably have that
in common, who embodies an amazing
mix of energy strategy and evangelism.
I am so lucky to work with Dave, and
I'm so excited to talk with Dave today.
He has spent 25 years leading
product teams across the globe.
He has led teams of Produceboard
Bumble, the BBC and MailOnline.
Dave brings infectious curiosity.
If you've ever seen him
live, I know that you are.
So excited to hear him talk again today
because he's passionate about the right
tools and how they can help product teams
and help us all to think more deeply,
move faster, and deliver impact at scale.
So this is especially
true in this era of ai.
Dave is also the host of a podcast
called the Vibe PM Podcast, where
he explores new use cases and he
actually demos hands-on new AI tools.
Dave, welcome to the show today.
Dave Killeen: Thanks so
much, Trisha, for having me.
I'm glad to be here.
Trisha Price: It's gonna be so fun.
You are one person, a few who can
match and maybe top my energy.
Dave Killeen: Oh, that's a challenge.
I'll take it on.
I'll take it on.
Trisha Price: Okay.
Dave, so you know this podcast
well and it is called Hard Calls.
It's called Hard Calls because as
product leaders that's our job.
We get squeezed.
Customers want one thing, our
CEO and board want another.
Our sales person has the most important
highest revenue deal of all time, and
here we are stuck making the hard call.
So I'd like to kick off today
with you sharing with us, what is
one of the hardest calls you've
had to make in your career?
Dave Killeen: Okay.
We were talking before this podcast
actually, and it's like trying to
pick your favorite child, like which
of the hard calls you've had to make.
And there's so many, right?
And I joke is why I've got so little
hair left, but I think one of the
hardest calls I've had to make, which
is less on the product side, but is
like, I left Productboard back in March
24, and I had three months like paid.
Was it a redundancy?
I had all this time, you know,
March time to go outside, you
know, get fit, take some time off.
Right.
And did I do that?
No.
What I did was, you probably know
the story, but I basically stayed
in this room for three months.
Pretty much every day apart from
Saturday to Sunday when I wasn't
allowed to at Faffing and going down
Rabbit with AI And it was brilliant.
My husband was really annoyed with me.
He was like, go outside,
get outta the house.
You're doing my head in.
I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
AI.
AI.
we have to lean into this and
see where that puck is going.
And so I went down that rabbit hole for
three months and I thought I'd find a job.
But then I started looking come
towards what end of those three months.
And everything I looked at through
recruiters was just like not interesting.
I felt that company's gonna
die in the next two years.
They got no idea where the puck is
going, that alone, where it's at, Trisha.
And so I was discounting everything to
the point where exec search firms are
coming to like, you know, a month six
and going, Dave, you're too precious.
You need to take a job.
And I just held out.
And then Trisha, you came in my inbox
and you saw me doing stuff on YouTube
and you said, Hey look, you're a bit
unhealthily obsessed about all of this.
And you've done product for the last
25 years, do you wanna come into Pendo?
So I really feel, when I talk to others
that are unfortunately losing their
roles, I'm like, you're very lucky.
It's the last thing people
wanna hear, but I've got, I've
got kids, I've got mortgages.
But if you have that time at the moment
to kind of make use of that time,
whether you're working or whether
you're, unfortunately not, it's a great
time to be leading in and get some
sense of where that puck is going.
And that's brilliantly positioned me
now here at Pendo to be doing the VPN
podcast and other things because of that
unhealthy obsession of all things AI.
But it was hard to convince my husband,
to hold the course and go look.
I know it's not great.
Yes, we'll sell the car.
Yes, we'll stop getting flowers in.
But ultimately it's paid off handsomely
for me and for Pendo, I hope.
And it's been really good.
But yeah, a ton of other hard
card calls we'll try weave into
the conversation as we go ahead.
Trisha Price: Yeah, well I love that
hard call and it's atypical, right?
It's not the typical hard call where
usually guests come on and talk about,
you know, a person they really cared
about and had done great work for the
company, but who couldn't take them
forward and scale, or a decision from a
product perspective that they had to say
no to a important customer and feature.
But this one's so special and different
because your career is in a different
spot than most product leaders right now,
which I think is amazing that it does
afford you time to stay up to date and
play with the latest and greatest tools.
And I wanna talk more about that
today, but I also wanna make a point,
you know, that, that you just, I just
wanna put a, a pin on the point you
just made, which is, even if you don't
lose your job and become redundant.
Dave Killeen: Mm-hmm.
Trisha Price: We as product
leaders have got to get
hands-on with these tools today.
Like it's a non-negotiable.
Dave Killeen: A hundred percent.
And I mean, you'll find, we talk a
lot more about this on this, on this
pod, but like ultimately you can, by
finding the time it's a flywheel, right?
You'll actually save an awful lot
more time than the time you're
looking for in the first place.
Right?
And it just compounds.
And I think if you're
using AI in that kind of.
You know, efficient and effective way
of as a sparring and thinking partner.
Then you will find then more
time and more time, right?
So you end up, I feel personally
I'm getting seven days work
worth of work done, and four now.
As a result, just find
that bit of time upfront.
I think you can leverage it a lot
more effectively and it'll pay
very, very handsomely for you.
Trisha Price: Yeah, I totally agree.
And before we jump into specific tools,
because you're an expert on this and
I know our listeners want like the
meaty important things that, you know.
Tell us why do you even care?
Like Sure, it's fun.
Sure it's relevant.
Sure, it's where the puck's going, but
like why does it even matter, you know,
getting a hands on with these tools?
Dave Killeen: I think it's so important.
I think we are, it's
just it's non-negotiable.
It is something that everyone has to
get their hands around and, you know,
the analogy I use, and it's kinda what
struck me when I had those, that time
off for those first three months, is
that it's like, you know, you get home
after a long day of work, you need
to open up the fridge door to see.
What's inside that you
can rustle up for dinner?
What ingredients you
have to play with, right?
And I think most people, I keep
saying they're not doing that.
They know it's got potential.
They know there's something
in there, but you need to make
time to open up the fridge door.
And from a first principal's point
of view, just get some sense of
like, what tools can work for you.
Right.
You know, you know me,
I do speech to text.
I've, I really type anymore.
I can actually feel my fingers
stiffening over the last year.
And you start flying
through your work, right?
You're in deeper state of flow.
And so I think once you taste it, once
you pick those ingredients outta the
fridge and start playing with them.
You quickly realize there's no going back.
And then you go down and down and
down and down the rabbit hole.
and ultimately, like you say, you
get to that point where you just,
you feel you're flying, right?
And then when they can start infecting
your teams and your teams run that deeper
state of flow collaboratively together.
It's just it's quite different.
It's amazing.
Trisha Price: So, Dave,
with that, tell me like.
One or two of you know, your favorite
tools are tools that have really
surprised you, maybe you weren't
expecting before you played with them
to get real bang for your back or really
change the way you operate and get,
you know, different level of velocity.
Yeah.
Share with me one or two of those.
Dave Killeen: I think basic
level and the one I keep banging
on about is speech to text.
And there's two there.
There's flow voice, and then there's
super whisper.com and they're one's
more simple, one's more complex, and
you've got these different modes.
So if you're leaving comments on the
Google Doc, you can just kind of have a
mode for that, which essentially a prompt
that says, take your gobbledy gook and
then turn it into a succinct comment
that's helpful for the recipient and
all these different modes in that app.
And then something nice
and simple with flow voice.
That's the basics for me.
The rabbit hole I've been going
down in the last maybe say.
Six, seven months, but particularly
the last week is Claude Code.
And you know, and we're seeing a lot
of traction now, a lot of commentary
out there about how Claude Code is
there for non-engineering tasks and
Anthropic themselves came out with
Claude Cowork just the other week
and and it's fantastic, right?
There's a huge potential to
essentially have Claude Code
work with what could have been.
HTML files, CSS files,
JavaScript, TypeScript.
Now your text files, right?
Here's my Trisha page, here's my projects,
and I've got MCP servers now in there
pulling in my Granola transcripts and
I've got MCP servers for clarity, you
know, our Salesforce casting tool and
for moment our Gong type transcripts.
And so, everything's now coming
in here and it's on another level.
So I've been doing that for maybe
the last eight, nine months.
But the last week's been unlock for
me because there's a team called
Every, and they're like a content
production team, quite small lean
team, but they're seen as a kind of
poster child for modern companies
in terms of how they work with AI.
And they've released a plugin on
GitHub called Compound Engineering.
And the idea is, you know yourself,
right, the more features you add to a
product, the more costly and complex
that product becomes to build upon.
And so with AI, you can reverse
it, you can flip it right?
So with this plugin, the idea from an
engineering point of view is wanna finish
a task, building a feature, it has this
thing where it looks back on our dance,
Trisha, it looks about what we've learned
and it actually creates a markdown file
of those learnings that get called in
every time I initiate a new session.
And so it's compounding its brilliance
from an engineering partner point of view.
And so I was on holiday just the other
week and I shouldn't have been thinking
about it, but I was like, huh, I've
got this PKM system, personal knowledge
management system, and I love it.
And Claude Code dances on my text
files, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you know, the more I add to
it, the more bloody noise it is.
It's hard to define stuff, right?
Even I've got the AI in there, now
I have got, I've taken the first
principles point approach from taking,
the compound engineering and saying,
how can I take that into Claude Code,
where actually it works in my PKN.
So the more I actually talk to
it, the more it learns from me,
the more information it gets.
This, oh my God.
Bonkers.
Trisha Price: It's amazing.
You know, I was talking to my
friend Jay Jenkins yesterday, and
Jay's a amazing product manager.
He worked with me back at nCino,
but he's left and done two really
small startups and obviously,
you know, in that mode where.
You're one of just a few employees
and you're making big things happen.
You are really getting your hands on
things, and he was telling me some
pretty cool stories how he was using
Granola as well for customer meetings.
And customers were either maybe
talking about a bug or a feature
request or something that they wanted.
And he was able to take his transcripts
from Granola, immediately into
Claude Code and actually create the
bug fix or the enhancement before
he was even off the call, send
it, you know, as a PR to his CTO.
And before the end of the call,
the enhancement or bug was in
production and fixed for the customer.
Dave Killeen: It's bonkers, Trisha.
I mean, honestly, I think the
challenge for us then becomes,
okay, hold on a second.
So everything's coming into my system.
It's being like this great chief of
staff on steroids, caffeine to the hills.
Right?
You know, how do you orchestrate
that at scale yourself, right?
So I have, you know, in Cursor I've
got like various different agents
working together on my knowledge.
My challenge becomes, hold on a second.
I've got six agents working across
my knowledge graph and all these
cool recordings and everything else.
Like, just, just remembering
where you were with them.
Right.
That becomes the bottleneck, I think now.
Yeah.
When it comes to personal knowledge
management, but you're absolutely right.
It is crazy.
You know, I had this thing the
other day, which surprised me.
I came out of a meeting with my
line manager and basically Cursor
was in, Claude Code was Instruments
in a way where it basically
wrote the email follow up for me.
And he's like, do you wanna
send that on to your manager?
I was like, oh my God.
Fantastic.
You know, we just, developed this new
thing, which is like a, part of my role
is to help our team and the sales team
to kind of, you know, between stages
one, stage two, to make sure that we're
really setting the power of Pendo and
connecting to business outcomes, right?
So important in what we do and what
generally what product people do, right?
And and so I now have a command
that looks across all the transcripts
and basically make sure that we're
connected to KPIs at stage one
to stage two in our sales cycle.
where we're not, I get the names
of the people I need to follow
up with, where we're underselling
the capabilities of our.
Had no platform of which we have
so much power behind it, right?
We're just going into point
solutions like, no, no, no, no, no.
There's an opportunity.
You're underselling, right?
And so, you know, we can give more value
to the customer, give them better ROI.
And so that for me was hard.
For the last six months,
I had to do that manually.
And now in my daily planning, I
do daily plan, does all of that.
Five minutes later I have my plan for the.
Trisha Price: I love it.
Well, speaking about business outcomes as
a product leader, I know this is a topic
you and I are passionate about and I know
it's something we spend a lot of time with
our customers in the market on, which is.
Everyone knows the higher level business
outcome they're trying to drive, right?
Are they trying to get new, you
know, AR growth in a new product?
Are they trying to reduce churn, you know,
through increased stickiness or adoption?
Are they trying to reduce support tickets?
Like they all kind of know that.
But like.
It is so hard to take that and know how
to translate that into North Star metrics
and what to measure for a product team
to know how to tie their activity to the
bigger picture of the company's success.
So talk to me a little bit about that.
Like I know you are, you've also used
AI to solve this a little bit, and
you have opinions on what we should be
doing as product leaders and as PMs.
Share a little bit of your incredible
wisdom on this topic with us.
Dave Killeen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
you know, I mean, it's something I'm
massively passionate about and, you
know, I think KPI driver trees are
the DNA dollar logic of how you make.
Money as a, as a business and how you
connect the product to doing that.
Right.
So, Atlassian came out with our
Atlassian state of product management
report recently, just about, maybe
about three months ago, I think it
was, and it said the stats showed 12%
of product teams feel that the metrics
they report on are connected to business
outcomes that the board care about.
Right?
That means 88% of our teams
globally, are basically feeling,
yeah, we're shipping, but like, you
know, does it make a difference?
Is it important?
Does anyone care?
Let alone externally, right?
Yeah.
Trisha Price: Oh, four or
five customers asked for this.
It's like, okay, but is that
gonna actually do anything?
Dave Killeen: Mental.
And so I think for me, and the
reason I'm so passionate about
this particular thing is it is this
kind of comfort blanket, right?
There's this stat, isn't there that
I heard before that you know, the
CPO is the shortest lived role in
the C-Suite, 2.6 years on average.
And because I think the consensus
in that view is that they basically
are lacking that ability to kind
of drive the C-Suite and align
the C-Suite around market-centric
data insights and customer-centric
data from within the product.
And if you don't do that, everyone
will look at you in a C-suite
and go, well, they're driving
their org by their gut, right?
And if they're doing that, I'll tell
you what I think they should do next.
And before you know it, what happens?
My hypothesis is they either resign
because they have no relationship,
but it's kind of, you know, not great.
Or they get fired.
And what's great about Pendo is Pendo is
either, the way I look at it is it's that
sanity blanket, it's that comfort blanket.
It's what drives that alignment.
More importantly, helping you and
your C-suite agree on what not to do.
So here comes the KPI driver to,
right, because if you have that,
then you have that DNA data logic.
All codified.
And that becomes the guardrails
for everything that you do.
Right?
And also more importantly, for the
teams to feel joy in their work.
To feel, oh my God, we're
making a difference.
Yes, we're connected to that
important conversation at the top.
So .I was going to accomplish it all.
Trisha Price: It makes PMs feel
empowered because no good PM wants to
be told what feature to build, right?
Dave Killeen: Yeah.
Trisha Price: But.
When it's all bottoms up, you might get
a lot of cool features, but not a lot
of cool features that actually drive
to the strategy or drive to the higher
level KPIs or OKRs that you're, you
know, trying to drive in the business.
So I think when you think about any kind
of cascading in the driver tree like
you're talking about, you're actually,
people are afraid, like, "are my PMs gonna
be empowered", but that's what actually
empowers them because there's no driver
tree telling you what feature to build.
The driver tree is telling you what
north star metric matters at the cascaded
level, and now my product managers
are, to your point, not just motivated
and tied to the company's success, but
empowered to make feature level decisions.
Dave Killeen: Quite, quite.
And it is.
It is just that such an
alignment tool, isn't it?
Right.
And very few can argue with you
with what you want to do if you've
got that kind of, that logic.
Complacent, codified.
And so, yeah, I went down then to,
Auckland for a conference to product
managers, 400 product managers.
And the hard thing, you know, when you
go to a conference like that and you
have a booth and you're hoping people
come to you over the coffee break, right?
And I thought.
Hold on a second.
What if I vibe coded a KPI
driver tree on the plane?
And Elon Musk's Starlink, great
connection, Claude Code fired up.
And we pull it together and we'll
be sharing this actually quite soon
in the coming week or so, online,
on my, on my LinkedIn, and basically
it looks at everything that's
available around the company and
comes up with a star to for 10.
Now of course it's probabilistic, right?
So every time you do it, you
get a different KBI driver tree.
But where it gets more robust, and
that's quite interesting from AI
point of view, is we actually in
the app have the AI red team itself.
Trisha.
It's hilarious.
The AI comes in and goes, Dave,
honestly, you think that's a North Star
metric that's riddled with ambiguity.
What?
And this is a leading indicator.
No, it's not.
But the AI came up with it.
Right?
But then when the AI
came, read teams itself.
The quality goes up such a level
treasure and such, so interesting,
Trisha Price: like AI is
giving the AI a hard time.
But you know what, like that makes
sense because you could come up
with a North Star metric and I
might not like it and I might, you
know, give you a hard time about it.
And we would go back and forth and
back and forth and what we would
end up with would be better than
what I came up with to start, or
what you came up with to start.
Mm-hmm.
And honestly, agents.
Are the same way, like, you know,
they have the same kind of reasoning
skills and going back and forth
is how you get to a great result.
You don't just take the first
results and your first prompt.
Dave Killeen: No.
Trisha Price: You know that, that you get
just like, you don't just take the first
idea that someone on your team gives you.
Dave Killeen: I, and
you're absolutely right.
And I think treating
them like that, right?
you know, having that agent and
subagent architecture so you can
actually make what's happening
a little bit more deterministic.
and, but yeah, we've shown
it to a few other leaders and
they'll be like, oh my God.
Like even just today, went to
see a large grocery retailer
here in the UK this morning.
And they're like, this is really helpful.
We've spent weeks going back, like you
say, Trisha, back and forth debating, and
this is educating us about how we should
see things and maybe it's coming up with
KPIs we haven't thought about before.
So yeah, I'm TLDR hugely
passionate about it.
And I think Pendo plays
such a role in that, right?
Because once you've got that pulled
together, then the power of Pendo pushes
in those metrics and then you can see
exactly where you're winning and where
you might need to lean in more to.
Trisha Price: I love it.
So right, you, you've talked about.
Voice to text as a huge time saving hack.
You've talked about vibe coding,
in terms of a, a velocity and
really time to value hack.
But you know, as product people,
product sense and product taste.
And when I say those things, product sense
to me is just like knowing your customer
and customer value and to an extreme that
you really, really know and can make good
judgment calls, you know, based on that
job to be done and the customer value.
And when I think about product taste,
it's a little bit more of like.
The amazing minutiae detail
that delights a user every day.
You know, I know you talk about this,
and I think about this a lot, which
is, how does AI help us or hurt us?
Dave Killeen: Hmm, yeah.
Yeah.
Trisha Price: As it comes to relying on
either product sense or product taste.
Dave Killeen: Yeah, I was talking
with another product here recently who
said, I've just got into vibe coding.
And they were in Gemini AI studio
and they kind of vibe coded something
in like an hour, which would've taken
team like, you know, a month to do.
And then they're like, oh, that's great.
Thank you very much for that.
And by the way Gemini, can you come up
with a six month roadmap for me please?
And what we should do next?
Thank you.
Love you.
And then it does and then goes, "Hey
Gemini, can you now implement that for me?
And it gets it done in about 45 minutes."
Like where this six month
roadmap idea comes up.
I have no idea.
But surely you'd think Gemini
knows it's not gonna be six
months, but and this whole thing
turns into a Frankenstein, right?
Yeah.
It's gone off the way else completely.
And I think, yeah, to your point,
that's where that taste piece kicks in.
You have to make sure that you're really
watching it and being quite ruthless.
Despite having all of this power at
your hands now, just being really
ruthless about what it is you're asking
for and making sure that it really
does pop from a delight perspective.
Right.
You know, and it's just, yeah.
I just, I see so many people vibe
coding stuff for the sake of doing it.
And it was like, you know, people on
Twitter, like, yeah, look at this,
our vibe code, the Kanban board.
And it's just really like, is
that all you can come up with?
You know, you need to have that
taste and second guess that, that gut
piece and that comes some experience
and a good strong appreciation for
kind of, you know, what works and
pops and that can be replaced by AI
So it's a partner, right?
It's a partner, but my lord, have
I been surprised with some of the
ideas that it has come up with
where my taste is able to judge that
and go, yes, you are on the money.
Thank you.
So yeah, taste, taste, taste.
Trisha Price: I love it.
So tell me, in this rapid prototyping
or even vibe coding, beyond prototyping
world, assuming we've got amazing
product sense, amazing, we've got amazing
product taste, and we're using all these
productivity tools, how would this world
do we actually get the proper feedback
at scale and do discovery at scale?
Because like some of the older mechanisms
of feedback and discovery are hard to
do quickly to keep up with the pace
when you're using all these tools.
Yeah.
How's this changing?
Dave Killeen: I think there's, I think
there's two things, right at one end
of the spectrum where you go and meet
a customer on a call or you would,
you know, go, go to, go to see them.
You know, rather than doing an interview
with five coding, we can literally
actually vibe code it there and then.
You get their feedback, take it on board,
suck in the Granola transcript and go,
right, okay, what can we do with this?
what do you think of this, Trisha?
And so I think that's a different
way of doing it in the kind of the,
the less scalable way, but quite
an interesting angle, I think.
and then ultimately I think, you
know, what we're doing here at
Pendo of course, is we allow you
to collect that at scale from.
All your different systems
and bring that together.
And I think being able to process
that through AI and having that
taste element on top of it right, is
just so powerful and so effective.
And I think then kind of going beyond
that, where we're going I think is being
able to tailor interfaces, being able to
actually run those experiments at scale
per segment, you know, offered up through
Pendo, for example, right in the UI.
I think that's fantastic.
Right?
So that becomes.
You know, mini experiments that
actually can be surfaced to, to
folk and to get their feedback
and see how they're using things.
So I think that whole
space is fascinating.
And you think about like, some people
are doing that where you can actually
create like virtual cohorts of people,
they're not even real people, but
they're personas that actually have,
you know, valid opinions, right?
And how do you throw
concepts and ideas at them?
There's some really interesting startups
in the space doing that right now.
So I think this whole
space is fascinating.
It's only gonna give us an awful lot
more, more, more taste, and uh, and
far, far greater impact as, as teams.
Trisha Price: Yeah, I totally agree.
And I think another approach too is if
you're vibe coding and you're able to
go this fast, I mean, experimentation
looks totally different, right?
I mean, you could put five different
experiences between feature flags and
rolled it out to different, you know,
subsegments of your population, whether
that's based on role, like some sort of
metadata or actually usage analytics,
first time users, experience users,
admins, things like that, right?
And I think like it's another
really effective way, and that
might've been really hard to do.
I mean, maybe not for like a button
change or a wording change, but that
was pretty hard to do at scale quickly
before, because you had to use your
engineering team to actually build
every single one of those experiences.
But when you're able to code them, like.
It's pretty cool.
Dave Killeen: It's, it's so cool.
I mean like, go back to
the KPI Driver Tree idea.
Right.
So, you know, I've been banging on
about this for a while and I think I'm
massively passionate about it and I
think, you know, there's something in it.
But like, what I'm now doing is I put
this onto Versal and and, you know,
there's no PII data in it, but basically.
I'm releasing it to those people down
in a Oakland, that sign up to it, right?
And I'm gonna use Pendo.
It's in there now.
I've got all my agent analytics in there.
I've got all my guides in there.
I've got everything in there, and I'm
gonna go and get the qual, the quant
data, the visual data, everything, and use
that as a way to bring it back into the
business and say, look, let's build this.
Right?
So I think we are just all,
not just people like me, but
every function across the org.
So much more empowered now, to bring
their creativity to life and have
that sparring partner in it that
can actually, giving the confidence
to march forward with their ideas.
Right.
So it's just so good.
So, so good.
Trisha Price: So, I mean, fast
forward for our listeners.
They start utilizing a lot of these
tools that you're talking about.
They free up their time.
What do we do with all
this free time, Dave?
Dave Killeen: Oh, so I read this
book called The Brain at Rest, and
I've been a bit of a workaholic
over the last 20 years, 25 years.
And the Brain at Rest basically talks
about we have the default mode network
and we have the executive mode network.
And so.
Unfortunately for most of society over
the last maybe 10 years, we've been
very much in the executive mode network
where it's all task-based work and TV
watching, all that kind of stuff, and
social and all mobile, blah, blah, blah.
And then we don't have enough
time for the default mode network.
It's where all creativity,
you know, flourishes, right?
So the book I read on holiday, and it was
a bit of epiphany for me, because one view
on AI for organizations and individuals
is that, well, look, just get more done.
You know, keep working your
ass off for five days a week,
12-hours a day, whatever.
And it says three signs.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You find some time, with the science
backing it up to go outside, go for
a walk in the in the forest, hug
a tree, and cold water swimming.
Watch this blue sky,
the shape of the clouds.
Just get some default mode network going.
And then what happens is then
all your ideas will flourish.
And so, I think what we should be doing.
Is not spending as much time
with work.
Find time for those breaks to let
those ideas flourish and then leverage
into the AI in a more productive
way to have that as a true sparring
partner to extend your thinking.
And I think that's where we should be.
I hope that's where people get to,
but I think the danger with AI.
We're just a bit lazy about the whole
thing and we just keep running and
running and running and just do not make
time for what is such a critical part
of our creative, our creative thinking.
So yeah, I would advocate, ChatGPT
a summary of the Brain at Rest
to anyone watching by the book.
It's such a game changer.
Encourage your or to embrace the ideas.
Trisha Price: And so tell me, Dave,
like that obviously comes from
lessons learned from you where
maybe in one of your past roles.
You didn't give yourself
enough time to think so.
No.
You know, any other, any other little
nuggets of wisdom from any of your past
roles or other stories you wanna share
with our listeners before we finish?
Dave Killeen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, I would say to
those earlier in the career.
Just lean in with your gut and what
you believe back to your taste.
Common.
Right.
I remember being at the Daily Mail
newspaper group here in the UK
before the internet was even a thing.
Really.
We're trying to figure out as
a bunch of geeks, like what do
we do with these paper brands?
And and we had this thing like,
you know, blogging was taking
off at the time and we were like.
Well, people are commenting on blog posts.
Can we like convince the editors
of the newspaper to let people
comment on articles rather than
like letters to the editor?
Right.
That was sacrilege.
Right.
But we believed it was gonna
be something quite interesting.
Our hypothesis was people might
actually be more interested in people
commenting than the author writing, the
journalist writing the piece of content.
And it turned out they were.
And so.
But we culturally, trying to do that at
a young age in my career was really hard.
You're trying to convince these floody,
dollies and the future and the potential
of the internet, but, and then we
created clickbait at the mail online.
And so again, hard to do, right?
But like, you know, I just think
to people, you've got good taste.
You believe in something, use
AI to bring the stories to life.
Use Pendo or something similar to get
the evidence in to build out your case.
That's definitely one thing.
I've always stuck by my gun since because
I just felt that actually, you know,
it's important to do so and if you've
got a good argument, but now, God, I
wish back then I had something like AI to
bring these ideas and concepts to life.
I think.
What else?
Yeah, just, just, I mean this
people issue's been discussed before
in this podcast, but I think the
hardest call I've ever had to make
on people was our Productboard.
We had three riffs, right?
And most companies were just really just
going through a lot of redundancies.
No one knew it was happening in the
market, and so it was hard to promise to
the org we're not gonna do this again.
This is the first riff we've ever done.
There's a never do it
again to stay with us.
Then you go through the second, then
you go through the third and you're
trying to get people to believe.
You're trying to be transparent and
honest and authentic, and you're
trying to wrap your arms about them
and do it in the fairest way possible.
It was one of the most, the proudest
leadership moments I've ever had.
but also one of the saddest as well.
Right.
But you have to hold yourself together for
that and make sure the team that you want
to stay believe in it and are fired up.
And obviously they're expected to
do is more, more, more than ever.
Right.
With, with, with less, less
resource, went from 50 my team to 18.
Really, that was the hardest
thing I've had to do, I think
emotionally and then product wise.
Yeah, killing products that, you
know, just aren't going anywhere
despite everyone, all the execs
wanting them to win in that space.
So yeah, lots and lots and
lots of hard calls, I think
is why I got so little here.
Trisha Price: Yeah, it's, it's the best
and hardest part of our job is making
those hard calls, you know, whether
it's people, process, product, it's
what makes the job fun and challenging.
But it's also, what.
What makes the job hard?
So
Dave Killeen: my, my, my grandmother
once asked me,"Hey Dave, what is it
that you do, because your mother's not
able to tell me." And so I was like,
look, Granny, what I do is I play
whack-a-Mole and I'm at the fairground
every day and I'm getting these obstacles
popping up left, right in the center.
And you're like, boom.
Got it.
You know?
You're nearly thinking Trisha, as
creatively around your hard calls as
you are around your roadmap and market.
And I think it's, it's a really, it's
perversely a very interesting role,
product leadership, but also, yeah,
very, very challenging but rewarding.
Trisha Price: It is.
Well, Dave, thank you so much
for joining hard calls today.
Even a bigger thank you to you for joining
Pendo and the impact that you're having,
not just at Pendo, but for all of us.
It as product leaders in our product
community, for Dave and I both.
A big part of what gets us up
in the morning is, spending time
with the overall PR community.
That's why we have this
podcast here today.
And so Dave, I just thank you
for, for all you're doing for
the craft and for the community.
Thanks.
Dave Killeen: Thank you, Trisha.
And thank you for bringing
me into Pendo as well.
Thank you so much.
Massive dent for me.
I really believe.
Thank you.
Trisha Price: Welcome.
Thank you for listening to Hard
Calls, the product podcasts, where
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